The Answer to Everything

A BICYCLE SALESMAN ON TENTH AVENUE AND FIFTY-EIGHTH STREET in Manhattan offers practical wisdom to customers who walk into the store to buy their first serious bike. His body speaks with road-tested authority before he does, with quadriceps the size of footballs and calves that look as if they were blown up with a bicycle pump. Tutorials include demos on changing flats, adjusting seats, working gears on tricky hills, and getting out of toe clips in time to avoid toppling sideways toward the pavement, bike in hand.